Prepare for Camp
Our youth live in a busy and noisy world. There is so much going on the lives of most of our children that they have very little time to experience and think about the most important things in life. Among these are their own thoughts and feelings about the big questions of "Is there a God?" and "What difference does that make in my life?", "Who am I anyway?", "Where did I come from?" and "Where am I going?" and all the "Why's" associated with those questions. Camping can be an opportunity for all to spend a few precious moments in quiet reflection about these things. Your objective in coming to camp and our objective in providing Camp Liahona can center on these life questions.
There is another objective that can be important for your youth: developing leadership skills. Camp Liahona has a number of activities that can help you with that. Activities for which the camp has the infrastructure in place are listed when you click on "Facilities & Activities". Here are some ways you can prepare youth and yourselves for the best experiences Camp Liahona can offer.
Guidelines for Effective Camping
• It takes about three days for the shallow and artificial values of the world to fall away.
• It is absolutely necessary to leave electronics behind.
• Camping can make life very simple, beautiful and peaceful and open the door to deeper understanding.
• One has to be relatively comfortable (physically and emotionally) in order to be able to focus on the deep things of life.
• All should be involved in helping to pay the "rents of life", i.e. doing the "chores" while at camp.
• There needs to be a significant amount of active fun. Children of all ages need action and interaction.
• There may need to be intellectual stimulation to discover the profound questions.
• There needs to be solitary time for meditation and prayer.
These eight guidelines will ordinarily lead to the kind of "conversion" that you are hoping youth will experience. The depth and power of that conversion will obviously depend on many things. You will find that different youth will need different kinds of help. Some may need a good deal of reassurance that they are loved and important before they can get past feelings of shame or inadequacy and let their minds address the big issues.
Planning Your Camping Experience
Here are some ideas that may help you. You may find that these will only stimulate your thinking a bit and that you will come up with a better way for you to organize your planning.
1. Pray for guidance and inspiration as you plan. You may be the most important person in the universe in this planning work.
2. Lay out a plan of activities that are appropriate for your youth. Draw from your own experience to select those things they enjoy and that will challenge them. You can also draw upon the "Facilities & Activities" already provided by Camp Liahona by clicking on that link in the navigation bar at the left of this page.
3.Check each planned activity against the "Guidelines for Effective Camping" listed above and make sure each one will have a positive effect on your youth. Pay appropriate attention to schedule, keep your programme manageable, don't overbook yourself or your youth. Make additions, deletions and other adjustments as needed.
4. Pray for the cooperation of other leaders and parents and of the youth themselves as you set out to promote and execute the plan.
Special Guidelines for Youth Camp Leaders
• The Aaronic Priesthood Achievement Programme and the Young Women’s Personal Progress Programme are very helpful in planning for a successful camp.
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Presentations and firesides should be planned prior to camp so that parents are involved and supportive.
• You may want to consider asking each young man or young woman to have been working on their progress book for a minimum time to qualify for Camp.
• Non-members are welcome. The local Bishop or Branch President may want to commit them to church standards.
• Leaders should have attended a one day Training Course held at the Camp.
• Youth should have been committed to live church standards and comply with the rules and guidelines of the camp.
• You may want to have a member of the Bishopric or Branch or Stake Presidency in attendance most or all of the time.
• A person qualified in First Aid must be present at all times with each group.
• Overnight combined Young Men and Young Women activities are not permitted.
“Camp Helaman” Aaronic Priesthood Leadership Training
An Aaronic Priesthood Leadership Training encampment has been developed by many Stakes of the Church. These have been designed to help prepare young men to attend the Temple and to serve full time missions. They often carry the name “Camp Helaman”. You can find several of them by searching for this name on the internet.
There are many variations of these programs, but all of them emphasize putting the Aaronic Priesthood Quorums in charge. The following is an example outline of such a program. It should be completely evaluated and changed to suit the young men and their circumstances.
Electronic devices are a major consideration for any camp experience, youth and/or adult alike. Camp Directors all seem to agree that it takes three days for the drumming of the world to quiet down and let the Spirit’s whisperings be heard. Please encourage your youth leaders to consider a complete ban of all such devices for this special time. Adult leaders will want to have one or two mobile phones for safety reasons, but their use and exposure should be kept to an absolute minimum. This will benefit the adults as much as the youth.
• A year before camp begins, the Quorum Presidents are challenged to prayerfully prepare an activity for their quorums that will build testimony, self-confidence, Priesthood confidence, friendships, and muscles. They may want to fast together before their first planning/goal setting council. All planning is with Aaronic Priesthood Purposes as guides. Goals will include some or all of those mentioned but may well include others depending on the individual quorums and individual quorum members’ circumstances.
• The Aaronic Priesthood Advisors so exactly that: advise, council, encourage, fast and pray with their quorums as they plan and execute their program. They exercise what is often called shadow leadership but never take charge of program development.
• The Quorum Presidencies prepare a schedule with dates by which the tasks must be completed. For example, if the Deacon’s Quorum were assigned to plan and organize the facilities, the Teachers the food, and the Priest’s the activities; then, after a month or so, each quorum could report on their suggestions for these areas of stewardship and the young men could council together and prayerfully decide more of the details for each of these areas of responsibility. All these activities can be used as part of the Duty to God program.
• This process of planning, counseling together, working out details, etc. continues until it is time for camp to start. One or more of the Aaronic Quorum Priesthood Presidencies may wish to visit the camp in advance, perhaps even stay over one night as part of their planning activity.
• The Priests’ Quorum (or which ever one is running the program) arrives two days before the other quorums and spends that time in council together, having some fun, of course, and generally reviewing and fine tuning their own spirituality and the camp program
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